Africa, Asia establish joint network to fight climate change

LONDON/DHAKA. Representatives from governments in Africa and Asia have formed a network to support their efforts to factor climate change into their development plans, the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) said yesterday.

The Government Group Network on Climate Change Mainstreaming and Development developed its plans at the 7th International Conference on Community-Based Adaptation to Climate Change, which ended yesterday in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

The newly formed group includes members from Bangladesh, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, The Gambia and Zanzibar, and will expand in the near future to include other countries.

The network exists to enable policymakers in countries at risk from climate change to share information and collaborate in ways that can strengthen their policies and plans by ensuring they consider how climate change could affect development.

The network has developed a framework for assessing and planning how to integrate climate into the business of national and sub-national planning professionals. The building blocks of the framework are political will, information and awareness, and resources for programmes and projects.

The CBA7 conference – organised by IIED and the Bangladesh Centre for Advance Studies (BCAS) — brought together over 250 international practitioners, scientists, government and non-government policy and decision makers.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina opened the conference with a strong call for rich countries to help poorer ones to adapt, but also pointed out that developing nations were already leading the way in adaptation.

“This year’s event was especially important in bringing on board significant participation from governments, who now join the civil society based groups that have been mostly involved so far,” Saleemul Huq, senior fellow in IIED’s climate change group, said.

“This 7th annual meeting has demonstrated how far and fast the community of practice has grown over just a few short years.”

Conference delegates – and online participants who followed the conference over the internet – learnt about ways that people around the world are adapting to climate change in both rural and urban settings, and how governments can embed adaptation in all policy arenas.

“The conference was very useful both in terms of the things I learned that could be replicated at country level and through the interactive networking opportunities it created,” Lamin Jobe, a delegate from the Gambian Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs, said. “It has inspired me to advocate for mainstreaming monitoring and evaluation into our climate change planning and implementation processes.”

BCAS director Atiq Rahman said Bangladesh has reasserted itself as the adaptation capital of the world. “The issues of climate, development and vulnerability of the poor must be central to future decision making process. There must be assured, adequate and sustainable financial resources for the poorest of the world impacted by climate change induced extreme events.”

Next year’s conference will take place in Nepal and its theme will be ‘financing adaptation’.